


Veterans Day

by Carry_On_Moss



Series: Recovery Isn't Linear (and Neither is This Fan-Fiction) [2]
Category: Avengers (Comics), Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Bucky and Steve are retired, But it is heavily implied there's about to be, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Fade to Black, Future Fic, Gay Steve Rogers, Genderqueer, Genderqueer Bucky Barnes, Genderqueer Character, M/M, Middle Aged Characters, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, No Sex, Nonbinary Bucky Barnes, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary character written by a nonbinary person, Other, POV Bucky Barnes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rancher Steve Rogers, Recovery, and they own a ranch, but really aged up, genderqueer character written by a genderqueer person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 13:02:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16598414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carry_On_Moss/pseuds/Carry_On_Moss
Summary: Bucky never expected to be the kind of person who got to retire.





	Veterans Day

Some days he wakes up forgetful. Some mornings he feels strange in his own skin, strange in his own house. So he gets out of bed and he wanders. He’ll look out the window and see Steve splitting wood in the yard, or hear him on a call in the office. Sometimes he’s sketching in the living room and Bucky will sit across from him with his own coffee and read his book. Feeling strange but not acting strange. At least not in this context. 

 

It would have been dangerously strange to sit there, wearing nail polish and idly rubbing his foot against Steve’s like this in the muddy, foreboding campsites of the front, or in the diner around the corner back in the days before the war. But it was perfectly normal in their first little apartment where they’d done the same, when it was colder and the space was smaller, the furniture shabbier. 

 

How nice and how unexpected to be able to sit, warm and happy in an overstuffed armchair across from Steve, watching him sketch as always, absent mindedly petting him as always. How surprising to wake up in their bed, to wander through their house, to look out the window at rolling green hills or trees and birds, to feed dogs and cats and horses in the morning and in the evening, to brush them out and exercise them. To hire and pay staff, to make and eat meals, to land tired and well-worked in their bed at together at night. 

 

Sometimes it doesn’t feel strange at all. Sometimes it feels tedious. And sometimes it feels futile, still. More than 100 years later, there are still days when he feels cold, hungry, lost, forgotten and alone. Sometimes all he can do is sit in his chair, look out the window at the birds and absently thank Steve for bringing him cup after cup of tea, and soup he hardly eats and warm rice pillows straight out of the microwave. And sometimes he does the same for Steve. 

 

It is genuinely weird to stand in the laundry room folding clothes while Steve makes dinner in the kitchen, to listen to jazz music on the bluetooth and talk about the back pasture as they work. They’ve started talking about kids, too. Two or three little children to run around the house and help with the chores. To argue with and about, to teach and to care for, to love and to learn from, and to miss when they’re grown. How incredible the future is. 

 

For the first five or ten years, Bucky thought that maybe be would eventually get over the feeling of strangeness. And sometimes he has. Sometimes it’s all too banal, this ridiculous, miraculous unimaginable life he has. But then there are mornings like this one, sitting across from Steve, looking out the window at the birds, feeling everything at once. 

 

The day they bought the ranch, the realtor handed them two sets of keys, saying that one was for the property, and the other for the old red pickup in the barn. He told them “the previous owner said he wouldn’t be needed it in Miami.” then the man told them to “keep in touch” before he tipped his hat, got in his own slightly newer truck and drove back into town.   

 

It’s a good truck. Old enough that Bucky can do his own work on it, new enough that they can still order parts from the auto supply store in town.  

 

They’d kept on the old staff too, with a few additions and exceptions. Anybody who seemed to be uncomfortable working at a queer establishment either left of their own accord or was encouraged to leave by Steve. Anyone who stayed got a raise and a significantly better benefits package than the previous owner was able or willing to provide. 

 

For the most part, it was a completely normal life. Which is why Bucky found himself regularly baffled by it. Not the fantastical elements of their near-simultaneous deaths and resurrections, not the metal arm which had been his arm now for so much longer than his flesh arm had been, but the idea that he, Bucky Barnes, would wind up here was always, repeatedly, forever fascinating to him. 

 

Bucky was born for fighting. Being queer in the 30s in Brooklyn was a hell of a fight. That’s what brought Steve and him together in the first place. Then the war, then HYDRA, then the Avengers. Then himself. 

 

Coming out was nothing, he’d been waiting for that his whole life. But coming to terms with the Winter Soldier, survivor’s guilt, self-harm, depression, anorexia and his own internalized homophobia and misogyny, was a constant battle. No to mention the physical side-effects of the knock-off serum, the original arm and it’s brutal installation as well as 70 years in and out of cryo. 

 

After all of that, he’d honestly never expected to wake up to the sound of the wind rustling through the pines, with the smell of fresh, hot coffee wafting through their house, and Steve, a little older, a little softer around the edges than he used to be sitting blissfully on their couch. So, he sat in awe of it all, the birds outside the window, the book held gently in Stark’s latest and greatest prosthetic technology, the dog’s head resting on one foot while he used the other to rub higher and more purposefully along Steve’s calf. 

 

He felt the memory of stolen kisses in secret clubs and empty alleyways, of quiet mornings and evenings in their Brooklyn sanctuary before the war, of whispered vows in the dark with Steve, of desperate pining in the cold while first HYDRA and then Zola burned every trace of Bucky Barnes out of him, the killing, the carnage, the painful re-awakening. The institutions, the avengers, the quiet civil ceremony he and Steve had as soon as it was legal. The day the left the Avengers, the drive across the country and the quiet, happy night they spent sitting on the empty floor of their new ranch eating pizza, talking about the future. This future. 

 

He’d been called a time traveler before, and he felt every second of it now. How odd to be made for fighting again and again, in so many different ways and yet to find himself here, perfectly content, even on mornings like this one, when his head was filled with voices. Some who tried to keep him away from this, others who probably deserved it more than him, and his own who still didn’t believe a person like him deserved anything like this. 

 

But Steve did. Sweet Steve who was starting to hum lightly in response to the ever-higher movement of Bucky’s foot up Steve’s inner thigh. He put the book down and crouched on the rug, placing both his hands in Steve’s lap and began to stroke with purpose. 

 

“Everybody’s got the morning off today?” Bucky asked.

 

“Of course, it’s Veterans Day.” Steve answered, putting his sketchbook to the side as Bucky began to work his pajama pants off. 

 

Even if he doesn’t deserve it, and even if it doesn’t make sense that he has it anyway, Bucky decided again, as he had so many other times and days in the past, that he would embrace this odd new life anyway, strangeness and all. 

**Author's Note:**

> I posted this whole thing and then realized that there are no such thing as days off in ranching, but let's just pretend that Steve's already fed all the animals.
> 
> I wrote this because I've been feeling especially weird in my own skin lately, very much like I don't belong here after all I've seen/experienced/etc. I was sitting in my living room just staring at the birds in the trees outside awe-struck by the fact that this is my life now and it's so peaceful and unexpected. I very much relate to Bucky, having been treated like a tool and having been told I wasn't worth human decency, but here I am. A decently human person despite everything. Life's constant movement can make me feel dizzy with it sometimes.


End file.
